Carl Ulrik Sondén och medikaliseringen av religiös extas under 1840-talet

Sammanfattning: This essay is a study about how Carl Ulrik Sondén, a Swedish doctor during the 19th century, described and with his descriptions medicalized religious ecstasy in his thesis from 1842. The essay uses Vera Syrakvash theoretical model of medicalization to analyse how Sondén medicalized religious ecstasy, Chorea s:t Viti, to show how his thesis plays a part in the medicalization of Chorea s:t Viti. Sondéns medicalization, and how it is a part of the secularization that took place in Sweden during the 19th century is also discussed. To analyse this, Thorleif Pettersson’s work about secularization is used, and Sondéns thesis is applied to Petterssons theory of the three levels of secularization. The essay shows how Sondéns thesis fills all three of Syrakvash’s levels of medicalization and therefore fully medicalizes Chorea s:t Viti. This medicalization is then applied in to Pettersson’s theoretic model, and it fulfils the first level of secularization.